Grace rubbed his eyes and took a swig from his bottle of water. This was not getting him anywhere. Nothing in the past twenty-four hours had taken the investigation further. No useful information back from house-to-house enquiries, no vehicles of interest picked up on CCTV or on ANPR cameras. He still had just the three hypotheses written in his Policy Book. The weakest one was kids targeting the brother because of who he was, then going too far. Sadly, it did happen in these sick times. But he preferred the other possibilities, which were stronger. The most likely was that it was a warning to Starr from Gready not to grass him up, which had gone wrong. But he had no evidence and the prime suspect, on that hypothesis, was in jail and had been at the time of the attack. The other hypothesis was the burglary which was either genuine or had been set up.

His phone rang.

He answered a little irritably, not welcoming the interruption, but instantly changed his tone to polite respect when he recognized the voice of the Chief Constable, Lesley Manning.

‘Ma’am, good evening.’ He was surprised to hear from her, she very rarely called him, and usually only when there was a major investigation that she wanted an update on.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you, Roy?’ she asked, pleasantly, although he sensed an edge to her normally assured voice.

‘Not at all, ma’am – I’m just going through a long phone log on Operation Canoe.’

‘That poor man who was murdered – he had Down’s Syndrome?’

‘Yes, very sad – and a particularly brutal attack.’

‘How’s it going?’

He sensed from the tone of her voice this wasn’t the reason for her call. ‘Slowly, but we’ll get there.’

‘I’ve every confidence you will.’

‘Thank you, ma’am.’

There was a brief silence, then she said, her tone suddenly both sympathetic and a little awkward, ‘Roy, I wanted to let you know myself that unfortunately you haven’t been put forward for the Chief Superintendent’s promotion boards.’

It took an instant for the words to register. Then it felt as if the floor had been pulled away from under him. Before he could comment, she went on.

‘I know this will come as a disappointment to you, Roy; there have been limited vacancies and I’m afraid ACC Pewe has chosen other candidates as opposed to you.’

‘I see,’ he said, blankly, feeling stunned. Inside he was seething, but he knew better than to vent his anger at her. ‘Well, I really appreciate your telling me, ma’am.’

‘I hope you will apply again in the future, Roy.’

‘Yes,’ he said, lamely. ‘Thank you. Maybe.’

‘I hope more than maybe, Roy.’

He said nothing.